Michelle Beutler cleared 67 trees off a U.S. Forest Service road in two days. It was the spring of 2023, after a record-breaking winter in the Stanislaus National Forest in California’s Sierra Nevada.
A meadow on the Barona reservation overgrown with grass and invasive weeds hadn’t burned for decades. When the devastating Cedar fire swept through the valley in 2003, it destroyed 39 tribal homes.